Small Shops Shiver in Gloom of a Shuttered Red Hook Market

Workers cleaned up after recent flooding at the Fairway in Red Hook, Brooklyn, considered an anchor for area commerce.Credit
Todd Heisler/The New York Times

The wind was gusting and icy raindrops had just begun to fall from a bruised sky when Scott Pfaffman, an artist, stuck his head inside the window of Stop 1 deli, “Do you have a dime bag?” he joked, before buying a Gatorade.

Stop 1 sits on lower Van Brunt Street in the seaside neighborhood of Red Hook, Brooklyn. The metal gates guarding its front door are electrically powered and the power was still out on Wednesday, so sales were happening through the window, which the proprietor had to hoist himself through to get in and out, like a looter. “Just ask, we have it,” read the handwritten sign above the window, “*Except for hot food, sandwiches, coffee, tea and other hot beverages.”

Few people were on the street, and not just because a northeaster was blowing through. The gaggles of volunteers and disaster tourists that had materialized right after Hurricane Sandy walloped the neighborhood were gone.

Exhausted home- and business owners who had weathered the storm, fueled by adrenaline, booze and grit, were still coming to terms with the damage: inventory and equipment drowned by the hurricane’s salty surge, no insurance to cover the loss. More ominous to some was the absence of the neighborhood’s 800-pound gorilla: Fairway Market, the 52,000-square-foot waterfront grocery store at the base of Van Brunt, took on five feet of water and will not reopen for months.

“It is the lifeblood of this neighborhood,” said Triciann Botta, who, along with her husband, opened the Italian wine shop, Botta di Vino, on Van Brunt two and a half years ago. “I’m a wine seller. Food goes with wine. When we lost Fairway, we lost a big part of our customer base.”

Fairway’s closing reaches beyond the temporary loss of the community grocery store — as inconvenient as it is, local residents are venturing elsewhere, often by car pool. Fairway was a destination. After it opened, over some protests, in a striking, sprawling, brick-and-wrought-iron Civil War-era building six and a half years ago, it drew people “like filings to a magnet,” said Mr. Pfaffman, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1987.

New Yorkers figured out how to thread their way under the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and though Red Hook’s mazelike streets, finding themselves enchanted by its cobblestones, low-slung, rickety row houses and unassuming, small-town air. More shops sprang up to greet them, most along Van Brunt. Fort Defiance, a cafe and bar, opened a few blocks from Fairway. So did Botta di Vino and Dry Dock, another wine shop, and the gift shop Foxy & Winston, whose owner, Jane Buck, sells blown glass salt and pepper shakers, pink squirrel figurines, and stationery, onesies and tea towels printed with hedgehogs, piglets and owls.

Now Fairway is closed indefinitely and several area restaurants and bars are, too.

“I’m not sure how many months a little business like this can sustain itself without foot traffic,” said Ms. Buck, whose shop weathered the storm unscathed. “I specialize in things that no one needs.”

Photo

Fort Defiance, a popular restaurant on Van Brunt Street in Red Hook, is working quickly to repair flood damage and reopen.Credit
Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Four blocks south, workers in white disposable coveralls continued with Fairway’s cleanup, picking clumps of insulation out of ruined ovens, positioning industrial space heaters to speed drying and sweeping floors. When Howard Glickberg, whose grandfather founded Fairway, first ventured into the store after the storm, he wept. Display cases had tipped and shattered. The majestic $50,000 coffee roaster was rusting. Wooden cash registers were scattered everywhere, as if lobbed by a careless hand. Cheeses, breads, vegetables and canned goods blanketed the puddled floor. Workers threw out everything, filling 70 Dumpsters.

Fairway’s Red Hook location has about 350 employees, most of them local, and those not involved in the cleanup are shuttled daily to other Fairway locations to work. Mr. Glickberg knows that other businesses, not to mention local residents, are anxiously awaiting the store’s reopening. But he said there was a monthlong wait for much of the replacement equipment, and he is also waiting for structural engineers to try to make the store watertight. He said he hoped to reopen in two months. “We always knew it was possible,” said Mr. Glickberg, of the storm surge, “But this building has been here since the Civil War. There’s never been anything like this.”

Not everyone bemoaned Fairway’s temporary shuttering, among them Barry O’Meara, a gruff Irishman whose bar, Bait and Tackle, has served as a quasi community center since the storm.

“Nobody’s coming to my bar for a drink after coming in from out of town to Fairway because they have ice cream and kids in the car,” Mr. O’Meara said.

Still, Mr. O’Meara and others acknowledged that Fairway’s absence could only compound Hurricane Sandy’s ill effects, and harm the delicate and interdependent economic ecosystem of Red Hook. The neighborhood’s development, and gentrification, bounded forward after Fairway arrived. Rents went up. More dollars poured in. The treats shop Baked, which opened eight years ago, saw a sudden boom in Thanksgiving sales, with thousands of apple, pumpkin and pecan pies being snapped up by Fairway customers each year.

Small-business owners, many of them local, have always frequented one another’s restaurants, shops and bars, even before the extra money started circulating. But after the hurricane, they need to devote money to rebuilding. Winter is also looming, always a slow season. Some feared that “out of towners,” as Red Hookians often refer to people who live anywhere else, would associate the neighborhood with flooding and simply not come.

“A lot of business owners are in the same boat we’re in,” said St. John Frizell, the owner of Fort Defiance, “All these factors at once are really going to be hard.”

Still, the shops are inching forward with repairs — most of them done by the owners and their friends. Mr. Frizell hopes to reopen Fort Defiance in two weeks. So do owners of the restaurants the Good Fork, which took on two feet of water in their dining room, and Home/Made, whose owners spent the storm and its aftermath sharing their home, quite amicably, with four rescued backyard chickens, despite their seven cats.

Ever true to its pluck and community spirit, local residents have banded together to start Restore Red Hook, with the aim of raising $2 million to help the businesses bounce back.

“It’s not about each of us struggling,” said Monica Byrne, one of Home/Made’s owners. “We need to save us all, collectively.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 9, 2012, on page A28 of the New York edition with the headline: Small Shops Shiver in Gloom of a Shuttered Red Hook Market. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe